


A Strongly Worded Letter

by sergeant_angel



Series: Fixed Points [3]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, a fast paced fic. a whirlwind fic. just...a whirl of wind., and if you were jack's daughter i feel you'd have some choice words about that, dr has some issues with the doctor, feral on the way to being domesticated i guess?, for those keeping track at home this is post eot!master but closer to silver simm master?, fucking your parents' best friend's oldest enemy is a pretty harkness thing to do i feel, i love the doctor!!! but how he abandoned jack was Not Cool, originally the master was barely in this fic when i realized gay theatrics were appropriate, the master is a melodramatic lil shit, this is kinda angsty and a little anti-doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-02-22 21:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23767570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sergeant_angel/pseuds/sergeant_angel
Summary: Shehateshim, she thinks. Hates him with the weight of centuries.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), the master/donnarose harkness
Series: Fixed Points [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686151
Kudos: 6





	A Strongly Worded Letter

**Author's Note:**

> just know that [this gifset](https://sergeant-angels-trashcan.tumblr.com/post/615993713633705984) was a big part of my emotional pain when writing this, if you're wondering where this is coming from

“I’m JJ,” she offers, still not trusting him, whoever he is.

He hugs the wall, keeping as much space between them as possible, his eyes screwed up like he’s staring at the sun or something.

“Hello,” he says, rocking up on to the balls of his feet, fiddling with something at his neck—a bowtie? “I’m the Doctor.”

Everything freezes. White hot and icy cold, rage and dread course through her.

The Doctor.

She recoils but he doesn’t even notice, scanning the room with a small buzzy device that’s got to be the famous sonic screwdriver.

She _hates_ him, she thinks. Hates him with the weight of centuries, decades spent seeing the damage he’s caused, how he hurts people, turns them into weapons and then judges them for it.

“You’re a dick,” she says, and he looks up from where he’s sonicing a panel in the wall.

“What?”

“A dick. A pompous, self-righteous _ass_ ,” she continues. “I hate you.”

He lowers the sonic, head tilted as he regards her. “Have we met?”

“No. But you know my dad. You abandoned him on the Game Station.”

The Doctor freezes at that, looks her up and down before scanning her, sonic whirring.

“That’s not—”

DR decides all at once that she doesn’t care what he has to say for himself, and that she’s not going to waste an opportunity.

So she punches him on the nose.

“I hate you,” she says again, almost conversationally. DR leans back against the cold stone wall, fingers worrying at the torn hem of her shirt, the result of their scuffle.

That she totally won.

The blood has dried on the Doctor’s shirt and under his nose and he glares at her. “You’ve said, thanks.”

“I’ve been waiting a long time to say it, so you can shove it. I’ll probably say it a bunch more times, just to really drive the point home.”

“Well, at least you’re easier to look at than your dad is.”

DR side-eyes him. “ _Gross_.”

“What? No! I just mean—Jack’s hard to look at because he’s a fixed point in time. You’re not so fixed. Not natural, but not fixed.” He shakes his head, hair flopping over his eyes. “Still. You’re wrong, JJ. Hurts just to look at you.”

She continues to glare at him, wishing she could burn a hole in the side of his head.

“Come on, then. Tell me you hate me again, I know you want to. Can practically hear you screaming it at me in your head.”

“Fuck off,” she says instead. “You _left_ him. Alone. In the dust of a thousand Daleks, suddenly immortal and with no clue what to do with it or how it worked. You abandoned him to eternity. He trusted you, he _loved_ you, still does, probably, and you just—you _left_ him. Not like you don’t have access to a time machine, or vortex manipulators. You could have gone back. You could have checked up on him, at least. Instead you dumped him like so much trash. So yeah, I hate you. Nobody treats my dad that way.”

They sit there, the Doctor shifting awkwardly as the silence stretches between them.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I don’t care what you say to _me_. I want you to apologize to my Dad. I want you to _grovel_ , I want you to do anything to make it up to him, I want you to be there for him when forever gets to be too much. Because you have this whole don’t-look-back philosophy and it hurts the people you say you care about.”

He rubs his eyes and mutters something in a language she doesn’t understand before switching to one she does. “You’re so _hard_ to look at,” he whines, wrinkling his nose at her and then wincing at the pain.

“Maybe you’re just weak,” she mutters. “Nobody likes a whiner.”

He’s stopped sonicing the wall to look at her, a sort of hangdog look that she _guesses_ could be endearing if he wasn’t, so, you know. _Doctor_.

“I’ve met Time Lords before,” she continues, just to rub his nose it it. “They didn’t bitch nearly as much as you are. Have. Did?”

“You haven’t met any Time Lords. Trust me, you really, really haven’t.”

He’s got this super intense expression, a woe-last-of-my-kind expression that sort of sets DR off, because you know who _really_ hasn’t got anyone like them? Oh, yeah, it’s her and dad.

“Fine. It wasn’t a bunch of Time Lords, it was just the one. And you can blah-blah-blah about how did I _really_ know he was a Time Lord, and first of all, he got that same constipated look on his face when we first met, but he got over it eventually. Super over it.” DR is distracted for a second by a memory of that shit-eating grin between her legs before she manages to move on. “And _second_ , he had a TARDIS and I know it was a TARDIS cause she didn’t like me much.”

“ _He_?” The Doctor says, apparently having missed everything after that point.

He asks her a few questions about the other Time Lord that DR pointedly ignores, choosing instead to examine her fingernails, because _fuck_ the Doctor, that’s why.

“What does JJ stand for, anyway?” The Doctor asks when he’s given up on the sonic working, slumped against the door to their cell. “Not Jackie?”

“It’s a nickname.” Irritation flares right back up in her. “I acted like Dad a lot when I was little, copying his expressions and gestures, so everyone at the Archive started calling me Jack Junior. JJ. My real name,” she takes a deep breath, feeling for all the world like she’s winding up for a punch, “my _full_ name—is DonnaRose Martha Ianto Harkness.”

“ _Oh_.” He _looks_ like he’s just taken a kidney punch, breathless and pale and pained. “He _didn’t_.”

“Oh, he definitely did. You may have forgotten about the people who used to travel with you, the people who loved you, but Dad didn’t.”

Her attention catches then, on the door behind the Doctor, suddenly recognizing it. She broke out of something with this door a few decades ago. It’s got a special trick to it, if she can work out how they set it in the wall.

“I go by DR now,” she says, crossing to the door and nudging the Doctor with her foot so he scoots to the side, shooting a glare up at her. “Do you know how much it weighs, all those names? Brilliant heroes, defenders of the earth, good, kind, caring, compassionate people. The honored dead,” she mutters, jabbing a few places in the wall, feeling the stone shift. “You don’t ever get to be a fuckup with a name like that. I don’t mind most of the time, really,” she looks down at him, kicking the footguard and triggering the maintenance panel to open. “But sometimes I just think that I carry all these names because you didn’t take good enough care of your companions.”

“Is that why you call yourself Doctor?”

“What?”

“DR. Doctor. Do you call yourself Doctor as a way to take care of them? Those names that you carry?”

“Hey, shut the fuck up,” DR says, and falls through the door into the waiting arms of one of the guards.

Fuck.

The guards drag her down a few halls before dumping her in what appears to be a throne room. This is where she was trying to wind up, so she’s not half mad about it.

There’s a hand under her arm, helping her to her feet with a lot more care than she’d expected, and she looks up into the face of--

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

“What are you doing here?” DR hisses furiously, jerking her head around to try and find the inevitable guards or assassins or whatever coming to attack them. He looks almost _insulted_ by the question, and DR should probably figure out his name at some point.

“I _live_ here.” He looks proud as he says it, a little too proud, kind of like he wants her to be impressed. She’s not, so he glares. “What are you doing here? Having fun?”

“What am _I_ doing here? What are _you_ doing here? I’m working!”

“Working? Doing _what_?”

“I’m here to stop some asshole calling himself the Master from taking over this planet, and seriously, what are _you_ doing here?”

He grins, and before he even opens his mouth the _ah fuck_ is echoing in DR’s head.

“I’m the Master,” he informs her, and, well, shit. “And you’re too late.”

DR can’t compute anymore. She officially has lost the capacity to understand any of this. He slides his hand into her back pocket, shamelessly gropes her ass, and then starts to drag her forward, down a side hall.

“No, hang on,” DR plants her feet. “Seriously, no, _what is happening_.”

“We’re leaving. I’m bored here, we should go commit arson. I was thinking, there’s this restaurant--”

“No, these people, they want to kill you--”

“—which is why we’re leaving--”

“—they _hired me_ \--”

“—I know, I suggested it--”

“—and there was—in my _cell_ \--”

“--did you like your surprise?” he—the _Master_ , ah _shit_ _shit shit_ , interrupts, bouncing on his feet.

 _Feral,_ she thinks. _Feral bastard golden retriever pitbull boy_.

“What surprise? The surprise where you’re a genocidal maniac?”

“Don’t try to distract me with flattery,” he turns to wag his finger at her, walking backwards. “The Doctor! Did you like that? I won’t lie, it took some doing to get him here without a companion, and then to get you here at the same time--”

“Wait.” DR stops, one hand up, the other braced on her thigh, her head spinning. “ _Wait_. What? You—this— _what?”_

The Master looks even _more_ delighted, the unsexy cannibal grin slashed across his face. “You’d never met him last time we crossed paths. And he’s been a sanctimonious twat in that regeneration. I thought you might enjoy knocking him down to size.”

DR’s head keeps spinning because breathing is somehow absurdly hard.

“Are you having a panic attack?” The Master asks, a cool hand landing between her shoulder blades, one soothing on her overheated brow. “I read about them like you said. Do I need to find a refrigerator to put you in?”

“No, I’m--” _What_ , her brain supplies. _What what what WHATWHATwhatwhat._ “Let me—do I have this right? You tricked the Doctor here. And me here. At the same time. So you could put us in a jail cell together. So I could. Yell at him?”

The Master pushes her down to the floor, back propped against the stone wall before sliding down next to her, nose crinkled like he’s thinking very hard about his answer, suddenly unsure if the truth is the right way to go.

“Well, Yes. Was that not right?”

“Are you going to kill him?”

The Master shrugs. “Nah. He’s probably escaped already.”

“What an asshole,” DR says with a breathless laugh.

The Master leans his shoulder into hers. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

DR raises an eyebrow, opens her mouth to make an inappropriate remark--

“Don’t,” the Master says. “You’re going to say something crude, I can practically feel it,” he continues, poking lightly at her temple.

“As long as you get the gist.” DR leans her head against his shoulder, weird moment of panic subsiding.

No, not panic. Overwhelming, yes, but not _bad_.

“The look on his face when you punched him,” the Master says, absolutely content. “And the _crack_. You broke his nose! Brilliant. I didn’t expect that.”

“Thank you,” she says, setting aside trying to figure out what all this means for a moment. “For kidnapping the Doctor and me so I could yell at him for fucking over my Dad. That means a lot to me. I’m glad I got to do it.”

He nods against her.

“But next time, you know, you can just call me? You don’t have set up an elaborate plot to hire me to kill you and then throw me in jail.”

He scoffs. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Where, indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> look, okay. i love the doctor. but sometimes the doctor needs to be told off. I feel like a child of Jack's would, like, organically come to dislike the Doctor which is a fun tension to play around with.  
> and there's an entirely different fic path universe whatever where DR absolutely loves the Doctor. This just...isn't that one.


End file.
